Keeping it peaceful in a small town

5 full-time officers in Miller: 'We haven't had the problems'

Oct. 30, 2013

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The floral shop owner grew up in Sioux Falls and spent 10 years in Kansas, just miles from where police apprehended Dennis Rader, a mass murderer known as the BTK Killer.

“He was 25 miles away, stopping at the same gas station I stopped at,” Wallace said.

In Miller, where her parents and grandparents grew up, everything feels different. Her 6-year-old daughter walks from the Miller school to her shop every day — an 8-block jaunt — and Wallace doesn’t worry. She isn’t concerned if her children disappear for a moment or two in public, either.

“We go to the ball games, and I let my kids run wild,” Wallace said. “It’s fine, because everyone knows they’re my kids. If you go to a game in Huron or Sioux Falls, you can’t let your kids do that.”

John Niederauer, who owns the downtown Ace Hardware store, sees the city of 1,500 the same way.

“People will talk about murders and stuff, but I can’t even remember the last time we’ve had one,” Niederauer said. “Most of what we’ll have here is going to be a break-in once in a while.”

With five full-time officers and two Hand County deputies in town, Niederauer isn’t concerned about a lack of coverage.

“For a county that’s down to 3,600 people, we have a lot of officers around here,” he said.

Not every small town has opted to maintain that level of police protection. Dozens of towns in South Dakota contract with local sheriff’s departments. Some opt for 10 hours of patrol coverage, others for 30 or 40. A few, such as Dell Rapids, pay for 24-hour protection.

Having 24/7 coverage by a local agency is a deterrent to crime, Police Chief Shannon Speck said, and adds to residents’ peace of mind.

“If somebody’s thinking about driving home when they’re a little intoxicated and they see an officer right there, they might think twice,” Speck said. “Granted, there are going to be times when you won’t see things. You can’t be everywhere at once. But it helps a lot to be visible.”

Despite the low crime rate — there were 378 criminal charges of all types filed in Hand County in fiscal year 2013 — the department has plenty to do, Speck says. As of Sept. 25, there had been 345 total 911 calls in Hand County, and Miller represents a good share of them. That’s in addition to calls and reports that aren’t emergencies and come in to the department’s main line.

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“Unfortunately, drugs are everywhere, and we have drugs here, too,” Speck said.

Speck also acknowledges that the town got a black eye from a police chief who is now imprisoned for murder. Ken Huber, who also served as Highmore’s police chief, was hired in 2009. Within months, he was asked to resign based on unprofessional conduct.

Less than two months later, Huber had shot and killed his wife.

Speck has targeted locals for hiring in hopes of keeping officers on staff who will respect their position as role models in the community.

“This job is about good public relations. They know you. Everybody knows you,” Speck said. “If you wrote tickets all day every day in a small town, would you have a job at the end of a year? I don’t know. It would be tough.”

Mayor Ron Blatchford is pleased with Speck’s work as chief, and he says he’d never endorse a move to dissolve the police department.

“(County law enforcement) has been talked about, but it’s never flew for various reasons,” Blatchford sad. “It’s 40 miles to all four corners of the county … I think that’s probably the biggest reason — it’s the territory involved.”

Wallace agrees. Even though she trusts her neighbors, she’s glad to know that there’s always an officer on the streets.

“Most of the people here want to have that 24/7 policing,” she said. “We haven’t had the problems, and I think it’s because we have the coverage.”